[Spoilers]C6PBEM23: Krill sidles yonder, and probably fails

[Krill]

T158

No pictures, text only - TAD offered DOF, and I accepted. I understand that this means I get the opportunity for first strike on T189, TAD gets to declare war on T190.

Short version: I need cities. Attacking TAD in a few turns with battleships, my two coal to his one is probably the best way to win a zero sum game, but this is a three way fight with two interested parties: I do not want to get caught between TAD and Whosit with military alliances I can't counter. This way I can fight Whosit either on equal footing (plus significant tech advantage), or with a working military alliance. I'm shipping everything over, and other than Lumberjack on building duty, everything else can pretty much stay on military. Also I can't integrate TADs cities into my holdings due to loyalty, but that problem does not exist with Whosit.

I almost got Refining to complete SoT159 but I was a few beakers short. I'm now producing over 180bpt, and this will increase a little more over the next few turns. Aim for 200bpt in roughly 10 turns (when Venice reaches size 10, I'm probably being optimistic by 2 turns or so).

Until I know where oil is, then I can't do much more planning. If I don't have any oil things are going to go down the pan very quickly.

[Krill]

Oil in 1, and then we see what sort of game we have.

[Krill]

Any lurkers want to place bets on where the oil spawns, and who has how many, now's the time to post.

I'm going with: I have no land based oil in territory, but there is one down at Fishtail. TAD has 5, and greenline has another oil within the city limits of Urtin Duu.

[Krill]

T160

Good turn. It's worth reporting, so you are going to have to wait until tomorrow.

I'm going with: I have no land based oil in territory, but there is one down at Fishtail. TAD has 5, and greenline has another oil within the city limits of Urtin Duu.

One of these things is right, two are close, one is wrong. Have a guess.

[RefSteel]

One of these things is right, two are close, one is wrong. Have a guess.

Of course the pessimist says, "Right, you have none; wrong, not even at Fishtail; close, TAD has 6; close, there's one on the far side of Urtin Duu, but not within the city limits."  But I'm going to guess:

1) Close!  You have only 1-2 in your territory, possibly requiring tile purchase.
2) Close!  One of them is near fishtail, but is also accessible from an existing city.
3) Wrong!  He has 1-2 and can get a (second and/or) third with a new city or tile purchase or something, but not more.
4) Right!  Urtin Duu has one.

How'd I do?

[Krill]

I suspect that we might actually get a post war about the definition of close.

The report is written, but whilst I'm not a jerk, I'm not going to post it until I get two more guesses

[Jabah]

My guesses
- The wrong one --> TAD is not having 5
- Close x2 --> there is one in the desert between you in the contested area and possibly one in the ice where your not founded city would be
- Right --> Urtin Duu

[Krill]

Ohh good reasoning. Just one more enforced lurker interaction and you all get a cookie! /scumbag patronisation

[Kaiser]

hmm
- The wrong one --> TAD is not having 5
- Close x2 --> there is one near Urtin Duu and one in the ice where your not founded city would be
- Right --> there is one in the desert between you in the contested area

[Krill]

T160

Good turn. It's worth reporting, so you are going to have to wait until tomorrow.

I'm going with: I have no land based oil in territory, but there is one down at Fishtail. TAD has 5, and greenline has another oil within the city limits of Urtin Duu.

One of these things is right, two are close, one is wrong. Have a guess.

Wrong: I have dp land based oil
Close: TAD has 4 oil, not five, but he can't access two of them
Close: greenline has oil in the ice in the next city across from Urtin Duu (this point is arguable, one might say this is just wrong as it's well outside the city limits, and not close)
Right: There is one oil down at Fishtail.

Here's the oil related part of the turn report:




This is a reason to feel confident. Three oil, all land based, the first able to be hooked next turn. The faith from the quarry pillage at Venice pays for the builder. I looked at ways to puy a pingalla builder, but came to conclusion they were all extremely high cost for one extra builder charge. I should be able to get the 6 charge builder down here, and pillage gold should pay for the settler buy at MH for Fishtail (if all goes well, settled T164 with the second oil hooked immediately), which will be hooked via rails. Ultimately, I only need one oil to get started on building artillery. I will possibly wait for the tundra oil to be claimed natural by Ponytail (I think it might get it in 10 turns or so, and I don't think the cost of 230 gold is worth speeding that up right now. Might be if I get flush with pillage gold though, it's a good tile yeild (1/5), but I'm more likely to need to buy specific tiles at Fish Tail to force it to size 10 ASAP.

I hope to upgrade the treb corps to artillery on T163. Then it gets really fun.





TAD has four oil, three coastal so he needs Plastics but he can't actually reach two of them I think I can go on record at this point and lambast his city locations: He should have settled in a manner which allowed coastal cities. Strategically I think this decision is what has actually kept him back, but I look forward to reading his thread and checking out his early game; I do not understand what the trade offs would have been (to leave open the coastal city locations). Maybe I should be more circumspect.





Chev has four oil as well, and can reach all of them, but only one is on land. It is unlikely that he will be able to make any of this matter given his tech position.





greenline only has one oil, again I doubt it matters.








And lastly, Whosit has access to four land based oil. However Russian Blue has no wall and I have an opportunity to run some very strong horses up there. I don't even think it needs to be razed, and Sphinx is not exactly safe long term.

Meanwhile Ocicat is never going to touched and Abyssinian (Zanzibar) is also relatively safe for now, so Whosit is the only player with decent oil reserves. Good time to knee cap him then. I'm pretty sure the strategy is fairly obvious to lurkers, so I'm not going to explain it all.